*Wriggling around on the lab floor* I’m so cute. I’m so cute. I’m so cute. I’m so cute. I’m so cute. I’m so cute. I’m so cute. I’m so cute. I’m so cute. I’m so cute. I’m so cute. I’m so cute. I’m so cute. I’m so cute. I’m so cute. I’m so cute. I’m so cute. I’m so cute. I’m so cute. I’m so cute. I’m so cute. I’m so cute. I’m so cute. I’m so cute. I’m so cute. I’m so cute. I’m so cute. I’m so cute. I’m so cute. I’m so cute. I’m so cute. I’m so cute. I’m so cute. I’m so cute. I’m so cute. I’m so cute. I’m so cute. I’m so cute. I’m so cute. I’m so cute. I’m so cute. I’m so cute. I’m so cute. I’m so cute. I’m so cute. I’m so cute. I’m so cute. I’m so cute. I’m so cute. I’m so cute. I’m so cute. I’m so cute. I’m so cute. I’m so cute. I’m so cute. I’m so cute. I’m so cute. I’m so cute. I’m so cute. I’m so cute. I’m so cute. I’m so cute. I’m so cute.
[frankie's pov during this scene. starts right after she steals sinner's cig]
frankie and sinner have been sharing everything for years: a car, money (if they had any), clothes, guns. and lately, cigarettes too. there's no much difference between sharing everything else and finishing each other's smokes, in frankie's opinion.
it's oddly intimate, the way most of the things they do tend to be. like an indirect kiss. thats stupid, frankie scolds herself, what are you, twelve? she feels a pang of shame deep down in her gut for even thinking about it and wonders if the thought ever crossed sinner's mind too. probably not. sinner's not the kind of person to dwell on such things, too busy suppressing any thought that might threaten the precarious life they've built for themselves. if she finds frankie's new habit odd she hasn't said so yet.
with no distractions other than the roar of distant cars and an old janis song playing on the radio (something about love and blues and having nothing left to lose), sinner's intense gaze is almost unbearable. it's like a physical weight, oppressing and suffocating.
frankie feels the foolish urge to cover herself. the need to hide something from sinner is a foreign sensation. there was a time when they knew everything there was to know about each other, back when everything was a matter of life and death, hunt or be hunted. when the most important thing in the world was finishing the hunt they were working on at the time, to kill the vampire, shapeshifter or whatever it was that was terrorizing one of the thousand of nameless towns they passed through. and then move on to the next one.
frankie misses the rawness of it all. there was no room for hesitation or doubt, back then.
jesus, she's exhausted. she's covered in blood (hers or sinner’s? does it even matter?), monster guck and who knows what else. she needs a shower and a drink but she knows she won't get either until tomorrow night, if she's lucky. it's not safe to stop now. they should put this town in their rearview mirror and drive three or four hours before allowing themselves a break. getting rid of the monster of the week does not mean the town will be grateful, not in their line of work. they have a long night ahead of them. and it's starting to get cold.
for a wishful moment frankie lets her mind wander, what it would be like- for sinner to take that last step separating them and steal her cig back. to feel her breath on her skin. the proximity of her body (real and alive and right there), close enough to feel the heat radiating from her, close enough to touch. her shirt (their shirt) damp with blood and dirt, the butter soft feel of her old leather jacket.
she wishes sinner would kiss her. so close, it’s hard not to notice the few inches frankie has on her, and a small part of frankie rebels at the fact that sinner would have to look up, maybe even stand on her tiptoes, to kiss her. frankie's seen sinner flirt with the women she picks up at random bars in nameless towns. she knows all her moves, her cockiness and sleazy looks, the mask she wears around strangers. but it wouldn't be like that. sinner would lean in, unsure and slowly but so, so honest. she'd be real. she's only herself around frankie.
just thinking about it makes frankie swallow, her throat dry. she really needs that drink. it could be so good. we- we could be so good. frankie wouldn't even tease sinner about her height.
her eyes travel over sinner's face, from the sweaty fringe plastered to her forehead to the arch of her eyebrows, following the shape of her nose, all the freckles that adorn her skin, invisible under the night sky. but frankie doesn't need to see them to know they're there, just as she knows there's a small, almost imperceptible scar on her left cheek, where a shapeshifter nearly got her a few years ago. her eyes keep going down, down, to her bitten red lips, the gentle curve of her chin.
she notices a small cut on sinner's jaw and thinks that would sting if I grabbed her face. fantasy-sinner would complain between kisses, fond and playful (careful with the merchandise, frankie-) but she'd let herself be held.
in frankie's fantasies sinner kisses back. she always does.
as expected, none of that happens. frankie stands there, hesitant, reluctant to break the spell, and takes a long drag because she doesn't trust her own voice. she wouldn't know what to say anyway. she feels naked under sinner's intense scrutiny. her body torn apart, guts and secrets spilling out, making a mess. everything on display. embarrassing. she needs to pull herself together.
she waits and wonders do you want me? do you need me? could i make you feel better?
and then, with nauseating fear, do you even know?
just as her thoughts begin to spiral out of control, a bright, warm sound breaks the silence of the night. sinner's laughter is familiar and comforting, like an old, worn shirt. it realigns frankie's world and pulls her back to reality, away from her fantasy world (where sinner wants her back, they're in love, and their lives aren’t so fucked up that they can't do anything about it-).
sinner smiles, "girl, you've gotta start buying your own smokes" she says. her voice is unusually high, bursting from her as if she's desperate to fill the silence, too. frankie, in a gesture that now feels almost like second nature, pretends not to notice. for both their sakes.
there's this book written in the 1870's by an abolitionist minister, Moncure D. Conway, and I find it super interesting. it's called 'Demonology and Devil-lore', and it's basically this guy's theories as to how various deities evolved. keep in mind this is all just a single dead dude's opinions, so a big spoonful of salt is required, but he says that older deities (like Old Testament God) rarely have a clear split between good/bad, and can deliver both with the same hand, and that the later splitting of good vs evil (like New Testament God, who's quite a bit nicer) can sometimes be attributed to politics. because if you're attempting to use religion as a form of control, it's better to position your guy as the Good guy. and he goes over how various demons are just the bastardized remnants of gods from conquered/colonized religions that have been swallowed by christianity, and then makes an attempt to exhaustively categorize them by type (this is where the book gets a bit dull. as an aside, this guy would have loved Pokemon.)
anyway, it got me thinking about how religious syncretism would work in a world where gods were REAL, and so that became the subplot of The Ignoble Invasion of Prince Proculo.
it's set in 'fantasy Britain', which is a land that has experienced wave after wave of conquest and colonization. about mid 1500's, so we've had the Bell Beaker people, the Celts, the Romans, all the way to the current spread of Christianity, sorry, I mean The Goddess of the Resurrection. and she has to ability to literally demonize worshippers of other religions (which is why there's so many fun animal-people hybrids around), which makes it mentally easier for the crusaders of the Goddess to mop them up. easier to kill people if you don't see them as people.
her ultimate goal in all this is to swallow up all the gods she can and incorporate them into herself, because that's just what every god wants as part of their life cycle. and she's had great success, so far!
tl;dr The Ignoble Invasion of Prince Proculo might be an isekai yaoi monsterfucking book, but I couldn't have done it without minister Moncure Daniel Conway and his autism-fuelled theory book.
it's also funny, because when there's talk of 'The Old Gods' or 'The Elder Gods' in TIIOPP, a lot of the time they just mean like..... Apollo or something. like it sounds very eldritch, but it's just roman leftovers.
the game Pentiment was actually a huge inspiration for this. I won't spoil why that is, because that would give away the game's climax, but it's very worth checking out. also the entire game is styled to look like a medieval manuscript, so it's just a beautiful world to walk around in.
dailybridgerton
prguitarman
snowghoul
pixelskylines
